ACHILLE MBEMBE AS BLACK THEOLOGIAN. Issue 3 (July 2016)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Lloyd, Vincent
• Is Part Of: Modern believing. Volume 57:Issue 3(2016)
• Page Start: 241
• Page End: 251
• Publication Date: 2016-07
• Subjects: ACHILLE MBEMBE -- AFRICAN THEOLOGY -- BLACK THEOLOGY -- PSYCHOANALYSIS -- RACISM; Liberalism (Religion) -- Periodicals; Theology -- Periodicals; Periodicals; Periodicals; Periodicals; 248.4
• DOI: 10.3828/mb.2016.18
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 1353-1425

Abstract

Abstract : The Cameroon-born, South Africa-based Achille Mbembe is one of the preeminent theorists of race writing today. Leading the current wave of critical race scholarship that views anti-Blackness as a metaphysical rather than merely social problem, Mbembe's work brings together the tools of psychoanalysis, critical theory, and postcolonial studies. In De la postcolonie: essai sur l'imagination politique dans l'Afrique contemparaine (2000), 1 Mbembe focuses his critical lens on Africa as object of fantasy and resistance to fantasy; in his most recent work, Critique de la raison nègre (2013), 2 Mbembe turns to the figure of the Black. While Mbembe himself offers provocative suggestions about the implications of his work for religious thought, his account of anti-Blackness as a metaphysical problem opens constructive avenues for re-thinking Black theology. When Blackness is defined by death, the critical practice Mbembe describes and commends may be understood as a form of resurrection, restoring death-bound-being to life. I argue that reading Mbembe as part of a conversation in Black theology can expand the Black theological imagination.